Canajoharie took its name from the deep potholes in Canajoharie Creek, a Mohawk term meaning "the pot that washes itself," and its position where the creek meets the Mohawk River made it a transportation hub where farmers shipped produce to larger markets. The Erie Canal, built in the 1820s and opened in 1825, helped make Canajoharie a thriving industrial center, and Beech-Nut Packing Company, founded there in 1891, began packaging its well-known mashed baby food from local produce during the 1930's. The canal originally ran through the center of Canajoharie in a channel separate from the Mohawk River, with an aqueduct carrying it over Canajoharie Creek, but beginning in 1915 canal boats began traveling on the river instead, and the Thruway was built on top of the old canal in 1954 while the former railroad bed became part of the Erie Canalway Trail. More broadly, the Erie Canal, stretching more than 350 miles between the Hudson River near Albany and Lake Erie at Buffalo, connected the Atlantic Ocean to the upper Great Lakes, raised and lowered boats more than 570 feet through its locks, opened the interior of North America to westward movement, spurred cities and industries in New York and the Midwest, carried farm and factory goods eastward to Atlantic markets, and remains an active historic waterway within a larger canal network that includes the Cayuga-Seneca, Oswego, and Champlain canals.